Just a Christian guy trying to do the best he can with what he has

My biblical justification for everything (just about)

Anytime a Christian publishes a piece expressing their viewpoint on a subject, there will inevitably be a comment left along the lines of “what is your support from scripture for this?” This comment seems to come from the position that the Bible is a hard and fast rule book that is inflexible and must be followed at all times. There is a huge discussion over the nature of the Bible and I’m simply don’t have enough knowledge to get into it fully so I highly recommend reading Peter Enns and Derek Flood on this subject. Since I am a Christian though and the Bible plays an important part of my faith, it’s good to have some justification from it (I guess) so here it is:

“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments. (Matthew 22:36-40)

As Jesus says, everything else comes from that so I just take those 2 commands and do the best I can with them. If a view or interpretation doesn’t do one (or both though I’m not sure it’s possible to do one without the other) of those 2 commandments then I will more than likely reject it; anything I do is with the aim of fulfilling those 2 commands. It’s simple (but I am simple when it comes to the Bible), it doesn’t address all the questions and there have been innumerable times I have utterly failed at doing those; but if Jesus highlighted them then it’s probably best to pay attention.